^a117, Burcot Road, Sheffield, UK

Correspondence: Tony Jefferson, 117, Burcot Road, Sheffield S8 9FF, UK. E-mail: tonyjefferson45@gmail.com

Abstract

This article argues that Frosh and Baraitser's examination of the state of psychosocial studies in Britain is largely a critique of the kind of Kleinian-influenced psychosocial work associated with Wendy Hollway and me. It also argues that the alternative, Lacanian direction proposed by Frosh and Baraitser is wrong-headed because it effectively eliminates the psychic dimension. Against their espousal of the Lacanian notion, captured in the image of the Moebius strip, that the social and the psychological cannot be separated, I reiterate the need to hold on to a distinction between the social (the "out-there") and the psychic (the "in-here"). I then show how Cavalletto's (non-Kleinian) re-examination of Freud, Weber, Adorno and Elias as psychosocial thinkers supports this view and suggest that the real issue, as it has always been, is how to produce concepts that have explanatory power at both the social and the psychological levels without, thereby, eliminating the unique dimension of each level.